Descartes Blanche

March 15th, 2004 Posted in Essays

I work in an office building situated on the floors directly over a mall. To get to work in the morning I have to cut through the main concourse floor, take an escalator up to the second floor, and from there get into an elevator that scales up the wall to the office floors above. The elevator’s made of glass, so you also get a decent view of the mall on your way up, if bird’s-eye views of shopping maniacs on the concourse floor, shopping like they never shopped before, is your sort of thing.

The downside to this process is that my elevator is constantly being invaded by confused-looking and arguably mentally stunted shoppers who’ve inadvertently become separated from the shopherd and have no idea how to rejoin them. Now, the escalator that takes you up a floor only has a few shops—a pub restaurant, a optician’s, a public bathroom and some lockers—so outside of a slim cross-section of shoppers interested in getting lenses, buying deep-fried jalape